“Baby, I’m fine,” he said firmly. “He was gonna put his hands on you. My pregnant woman.” His tone grew colder. “And I saw red, the same way I saw red that night.”
The night at the bar. I knew that’s what he was talking about.
“Figured I was gonna lose control like then. That I was gonna kill him,” he blew out a sharp exhale. “And even the fancy lawyer the club has wouldn’t be able to get me out of it.”
My blood chilled at the mere thought of it.
His hand fastened on my chin, his soft lips landing on mine. “Except I could hold it together. Because I held onto you. Our baby. I’m not leavin’ either of you, Violet.”
My body warmed at the vow.
“Promise?” I whispered.
“I promise.”
Though I didn’t sleep easily that night, I held onto that promise tightly, Elden’s arms around me, reminding me he was here. We were safe.
For the time being.
I assumed things with the sheriff were done because there weren’t more raids on the club. And Elden’s charges were also dropped. Because they were bullshit.
Sariah had gone back to school. She never said anything else about the sheriff, which meant her dating attempt hadn’t been successful. I was attending classes online while designing our house.Our fricking house. Of course, since I technically wasn’t a qualified architect, we were working with a firm that was somewhat impressed and had already offered me a junior position once I graduated. And had the baby.
The firm was well regarded. I liked them. I liked the prospect of working there. Everything was falling into place in a scary way.
Although I had yet to have a mental breakdown and fly back to Carver Springs again, I still had moments of complete fear over just how well everything was falling into place. I’d jerk awake in the middle of the night from some nightmare or another, and Elden would be there. His arms would be tight around me, he’d murmur something comforting, kiss me. His hand would be on my stomach. Then he’d make quiet, reverent love to me.
That’s what he did those days... Made love.
Not that it wasn’t amazing. It was totally fucking amazing. But he became more tentative as I got more pregnant. He was more careful with me. Tender.
It was an adjustment. I liked tender. Loved it. But I was also working him back toward grasping my hair, ripping my panties off and bending me over the sofa.
It was those thoughts, along with if I wanted to go with arches in our living room or if it would be more streamlined to have sharper edges, that were going through my mind as I crossed the parking lot and walked into the clubhouse.
The clubhouse was quiet. It made sense. Everyone was at Hansen and Macy’s for a pool party. I was supposed to be there, but I’d left brownies in the kitchen. Mom made them for the clubhouse. They were like crack to most people. To a pregnant woman, they were something else entirely. I’d had all the best intentions with this pregnancy. To eat only natural, whole foods. The processed crap Americans ate on a daily basis was full of crap that would kill us, give us diabetes, cancer and all sorts of other things.
I knew all of that.
But my baby did not. She wanted pork skins. Burgers and fries. Brownies. And as hard as I tried to fight her, she won. I told Elden it didn’t bode well for us, if our daughter was already winning fights in the womb. He’d smiled and kissed the side of my head.
Nothing bothered him lately. Sure, there was the undertone of the murders and the sheriff who wanted to destroy everything, but even that didn’t seem to cause ripples in the calm waters we’d entered.
There was an odd smell in the kitchen, and. not like that time when Lucas had tried to make paella. It was bitter. Coppery.
Granted, my sense of smell was magnified right then. I could no longer stand having bananas in the house. Something about the smell turned my stomach. Also, no one could write with permanent markers anywhere around me. The thought of it alone made my nose wrinkle.
My phone buzzed as the smell became stronger the closer I got to the pantry.
“Baby,” Elden greeted. “Where the fuck are you?” There was worry in his voice, like there always was these days when we weren’t together. He also sounded anxious. Swiss was definitely at the pool party, and the tension between them remained. Even though they had been somewhat of a team during the raid, things reverted back to their tense holding pattern straight afterward.
Mom’s fury toward Elden had cooled entirely. She wasn’t good at holding grudges anymore, she was entirely too cheerful. Plus, despite her misgivings about me being pregnant so young and her being a grandmother to a child who was less than two years younger than her son, she was happy. Excited.
“I’m at the club, getting brownies,” I said, pointing out the obvious. The pantry door was slightly open. “I swear, if some biker has already eaten them all, we’re going to engage in a blood feud.”
“A blood feud?” Elden repeated, obviously amused.
“This is serious,” I snapped. “As my … baby daddy, you must promise to engage in battle with whomever ate the brownies.”